Public notice: Douglas Phillips is not God’s wounded soldier, and we are not shooting our wounded

They are out all over the Internet on the moment: Those who, in the wake of Doug Phillips resigning from Vision Forum Ministries over “an emotional affair”, are weighing in with opinions on it. Some people have been pointing out the fruit of Doug Phillips for years: He opposes protection for children from child abuse in the home, stating that “….We understand that the core problem with Child Protective Services is its existence.” His tenets give God a gender – male and make males God. Vision forum used to teach that women cannot vote, and opposes college for women. Phillips wants females to exist to serve men, even advising men at home school conferences to teach their daughters to stand behind daddy’s chair at night, at attention until bedtime, in order to be at ready hand to get the father whatever he wants whenever he wants it. He threatens Christians who had negative experiences with him with lawsuits if they talk about it, and allegedly has “men “dressed in black,” who used mafia-like techniques to “make sure any and all stories involving Doug Phillips in any way other than idolizing him were decidedly dealt with”. He encouraged home schooling even for parents who really does not have the skills or resources for it, thus ruining the education of many children. He say mothers with tubal pregnancies – a pregnancy which cannot survive and has a good chance to kill the mother -should die rather than to have surgery to remove the non-viable foetus. Some people left the Christian faith because of negative experiences with “Christian” patriarchy.* The people who know this understandably want fruit like this “emotional affair” to harm a “ministry” that has many people testifying to the bondage that it left them in. Others claim that Doug is a wounded soldier of the Lord, hurt by the enemy, and we are leaving him to die/ gleefully shooting him. No, Doug is not a wounded soldier of God. He is an enemy masquerading as one of God’s soldiers, making a profit peddling his wares** and meanwhile wounding God’s people and leading them astray. He admitted right now – and admit is not synonymous with repentance – to a tiny bit of behaviour not fitting for a soldier of God. Having an emotional affair, if that is what he did, is hypocritical considering his rules about courtship, and I may even listen to those who say his message will make affairs more likely. He never admitted to the much larger problem of sending out a message of human lordship and human bondage, and the abuse some suffer(ed) due to it. But whereas Doug either believes in, or at least recommend writers who believe in literal stoning for some sins, we are not stoning him, even figuratively. We wish him to be happy, to find Jesus if he did not yet, and mutual respect and love between him and his family. If he sold groceries or used cars or whatever instead of Vision Forum products, we’d even have wished him financial success. But we want the Vision Forum message to stop going out as it keeps people away from pure and simple devotion to the One who came to “heal the brokenhearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised”. Now happens to be a good time to point that out. PS: For someone who say this better than I do, read John’s comment here.

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Notes * I find such an attitude both right and wrong. It is entirely right to reject a “religion” that is all about making some people idols and others servants. If someone sees another centre to Christianity that is not Jesus and bears bad fruit, then I can see why rejection of “Christianity” (his understanding of it) is a reasonable response to a wrong premise, and why this is not a rejection of Jesus. ** Doug Phillips resigned from Vision Forum Ministries, the non-profit arm of Vision Forum. But business is as usual at the for-profit VisionForum.com site, with no indication of Phillips’ resignation.”